"See!" he observed, as we emerged in full view of the stockaded fur post, "palisades nailed on from the inside--easily pushed loose from the outside. Pish!--low enough for a dog to jump."
Posting us in ambush, he advanced to the main edifice behind the wide-open gate. I saw him shaking hands with the Governor of the Hudson's Bay Company, who seemed on the point of sallying out to hunt.
Then he signalled for us to come. I had almost concluded he meant to capture Governor Brigdar on the spot; but Pierre Radisson ever took friends and foes unawares.
"Your Excellency," says he, with the bow of a courtier, "this is Captain Gingras of our new ship."
Before I had gathered my wits, Governor Brigdar was shaking hands.
"And this," continued Radisson, motioning forward the common sailor too quick for surprise to betray us, "this, Your Excellency, is Colonel Bienville of our marines."
Colonel Bienville, being but a lubberly fellow, nigh choked with amazement at the English governor's warmth; but before we knew our leader's drift, the marquis and La Chesnaye were each in turn presented as commanders of our different land forces.
"'Tis the misfortune of my staff not to speak English," explains Pierre Radisson suavely with another bow, which effectually shut any of our mouths that might have betrayed him.
"Doubtless your officers know Canary better than English," returns Governor Brigdar; and he would have us all in to drink healths.
"Keep your foot in the open door," Pierre Radisson whispered as we passed into the house.
Then we drank the health of the King of England, firing our muskets into the roof; and drank to His Most Christian Majesty of France with another volley; and drank to the confusion of our common enemies, with a clanking of gun-butts that might have alarmed the dead. Upon which Pierre Radisson protested that he would not keep Governor Brigdar from the hunt; and we took our departure.
"And now," said he, hastening through the bush, "as no one took fright at all that firing, what's to hinder examining the ship?"
"Pardieu, Ramsay," he remarked, placing us in ambush again, "an we had a big enough fort, with food to keep them alive, we might have bagged them all."
From which I hold that M. Radisson was not so black a man as he has been painted; for he could have captured the English as they lay weak of the scurvy and done to them, for the saving of fort rations, what rivals did to all foes--shot them in a land which tells no secrets.
